In electronic circuits, two signals may need to be synchronized with one another. Synchronization generally means that both signals rise and/or fall at the same time, where typically the signals already have the same period. One way of accomplishing signal synchronization is to introduce a phase delay into one of the signals equal to the difference between their current phases.
A circuit for introducing a phase delay into one signal so that it becomes synchronized with another signal may utilize an iterative approach. For example, the two signals may be out of synch by five nanoseconds, and a given delay circuit may be capable of introducing an additional one-nanosecond delay into one of the signals each time it is called. Therefore, the circuit may be called upon five times to synchronize the signals. However, iterative approaches may have to be called a number of times, and thus may be relatively slow in performance.